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Verizon weighed acquiring Hulu

Verizon (NYSE: VZ) looked long and hard at buying video aggregator Hulu, its chairman said today.

And, said Lowell McAdam, whose company is rumored to be planning a Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX)-like service soon, "We continue to look at alternatives."

McAdam, speaking at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York, said he believed that over-the-top services "will be complimentary" to pay-TV services like the telco's FiOS TV offering, which has some 5 million subscribers.

It should be. FiOS, which the company says is near the end of its deployment, will reach only about 18 million households.

The company yesterday was rumored, in a Reuters report, to be looking at an online movie service that would be available to 85 million households.

McAdam, meanwhile, also said Verizon didn't plan to implement tiered pricing next year, saying that the fiber to the home that it offers Internet customers is robust enough to not need caps.

"Fiber in the home is such a large pipe that it's not taxing on the network," he said.

Hulu tested the waters for several months, drawing interest from a bevy of suitors before its owners pulled it back from the market.